is a
Television Station in
Huntington, West Virginia . Owned by
Gray Television , it is the
NBC affiliate for the Huntington-
Charleston market, the second-largest television market (in terms of area) east of the
Mississippi River . The station serves 61 counties in central West Virginia, northestern
Kentucky and southeastern
Ohio . In addition, it is available on
Cable in
Parkersburg .
WSAZ has been the far-and-away market leader in the Huntington-Charleston market ever since records have been kept, as well as one of the strongest NBC affiliates in the country.
WSAZ, the oldest television station in West Virginia, began broadcasting on channel five on
October 14 ,
1949 , owned by the Huntington ''
Herald-Dispatch '' along with WSAZ-AM (930 kHz., now
WRVC ). WSAZ radio had long been an NBC affiliate, so WSAZ-TV became an NBC-TV affiliate and has stayed with NBC to this day, though it carried secondary
CBS and
ABC affiliations until
1954 and
1955 , respectively. It is the only commercial station in the market that has never changed its affiliation, making it NBC's longest continuously-affiliated station south of
Washington, D.C.
One story of how WSAZ's call letters dates from WSAZ-AM's origins in
1923 . Radio engineer
Glenn Chase applied to the
Secretary Of Commerce for a license to operate a small radio station in
Pomeroy, Ohio (it moved across the
Ohio River to Huntington in
1927 ). In the application he reportedly said, "as he was making most of the equipment himself, it would probably be the worst station from A to Z." He asked that appropriate call letters be assigned. His request was promptly granted and the call letters WSAZ were given to him meaning ''"orst '''S'''tation from '''A''' to '''Z'''."''
A more likely story was that the allocation of the call letters WSAZ were pure coincidence as they were assigned by the Department of Commerce in an alphabetical sequence just after WSAX in
Chicago , and WSAY in
Port Chester, New York . However, the myth persists that the calls stand for "Worst Station from A to Z"--a myth WSAZ-AM itself helped spread by using it as a slogan for many years.
In
1950 , WSAZ-TV received
FCC permission to build a private microwave link to
Cincinnati ; allowing viewers to get NBC programming live. The nation's first privately owned microwave system, it was a remarkable feat for the smallest city in the country at the time to have a television station. The first live broadcast was scheduled for a
Labor Day Baseball game, but the system broke down for four hours and forced WSAZ to broadcast a fire at a nearby hotel. The Cincinnati link was ditched in favor of one in
Columbus, Ohio in
1952 .
Also in 1952, the FCC granted WSAZ the highest power ever authorized for a television station. This allowed the station to penetrate more of its huge viewing area, most of which is a very rugged
Dissected Plateau . The super-powered signal could be seen from
Cuba to southeastern
Canada . As part of the power boost, WSAZ moved to its current location on channel three in order to prevent interference with
WLWT in Cincinnati, a fellow NBC affiliate which also broadcasted on channel five. However, as the regulation of domestic television stations were normalized, WSAZ's signal strength was reduced to the same levels as other stations in
1956 . The station's transmission tower was the tallest in
North America until
WIS-TV in
Columbia, South Carolina activated a taller tower in
1959 .
The ''Herald-Dispatch'' sold WSAZ-AM-TV to Goodwill Stations, owner of
WJR radio in
Detroit and
WJRT-TV in
Flint, Michigan , in
1961 . Goodwill merged with
Capital Cities Communications in
1964 . Capital Cities sold the radio station in Stoner Broadcasting in
1970 , but kept WSAZ-TV until
1971 , when it was sold to
Lee Enterprises .
Emmis Communications bought the station in
2000 after Lee decided to bow out of broadcasting. Emmis then sold WSAZ to Gray Television in
2005 . The Gray Television purchase made WSAZ a sister station to
WTAP-TV in Parkersburg.
Being based in Huntington, WSAZ is located 50 miles (80 km) away from West Virginia's state capital, Charleston. As such, the station opened a branch studio there in 1956. It also opened a low-power station on channel 23 in Charleston to serve the Kanawha Valley soon after its signal was cut to standardized levels. While Charleston and its close-in suburbs receive the channel three signal very well, much of the Kanawha Valley is still unable to receive the
VHF signal due to the market's terrain. The Charleston translator was moved to channel 16 in
2003 after WSAZ began using channel 23 for its digital broadcasts.
Since 1956, WSAZ's newscasts have featured two anchors, one at the main studio in Huntington and the other in Charleston. NBC studied the format and used it as the basis for the ''
Huntley-Brinkley Report '', anchored by
Chet Huntley in
New York City and
David Brinkley in Washington. All three original networks have used this approach at one time or another since then.
WSAZ uses its low-power translator in Charleston to provide viewers with a "split" newscast. At 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., the two anchors appear together on screen until a certain point (usually 10-15 minutes into the newscast) when the newscast will "split." Viewers in the 28 counties of the Kanawha Valley who watch channel 16 (and those on the Valley's main cable provider,
Charter Cable ) will then see a newscast targeted specifically to them, while viewers in the other 33 counties will see a newscast featuring news from Kentucky and Ohio as well as West Virginia. WSAZ calls this concept "two-city news."
Rumors have persisted for some time that NBC may buy WSAZ. However, these rumors are speculative at best, especially since NBC recently sold four of its
Owned And Operated Station s located below market #25. The Huntington-Charleston market is the 61st market. Rumors also abounded soon after the Gray Television purchase that WTAP would scrap its newscasts and simulcast WSAZ's newscasts instead. However, this is unlikely since
A.C. Nielsen recently named WTAP the highest-rated NBC affiliate in the country--ahead of even WSAZ.
The station has announced plans to begin a "WSAZ2" on a sideband to its digital channel before September
2006 , which would also include programming from
My Network TV . The channel will feature a 10:00 PM hour long local news cast and a reairing of non-NBC programming currently on the main WSAZ feed in different time periods.
- 645 Fifth Avenue, Huntington, WV 25701
- 111 Columbia Avenue, Charleston, WV 25302
